Posted by: Karel Boele
on 29 Nov, 2011
We will have a stall at the Fair@Square Festival at Federation Square in Melbourne this weekend. Please come and visit us.
Posted by: sustainadelic
on 27 Nov, 2011
If renewables are ever to replace fossil fuels - and they must if we are to avoid catastrophic global warming - we need to start thinking big.
Posted by: Rich Bowden
on 24 Nov, 2011
The Essential Services Commission of South Australia (ESCOSA) — the independent economic regulator for essential services in the state — released a report this week which highlighted the increase in customers' take up of solar energy sources as South Australians look to offset rising energy prices.
Posted by: sustainadelic
on 22 Nov, 2011
Posted by: sustainadelic
on 17 Nov, 2011
With expectations low for the forthcoming Durban climate conference, it looks increasingly like our best hope is falling renewable energy prices. Here are a couple of interesting stories on that subject from Climate Progress and Yale360.
Climate Progress cites analysis from Bloomberg New Energy Finance that wind power will be competitive with natural gas within five years.
"After analyzing the cost curve for wind projects since the mind-1980′s, BNEF researchers showed that the cost of wind-generated electricity has fallen 14% for every doubling of installation capacity."
If that equation is projected into the future, the cost of wind will fall another 12% by 2016.
The Bloomberg report states: "in the best locations [wind] generation is already cost-competitive with fossil fuel electricity, and that will be the case for the majority of new onshore turbines installed worldwide by 2016.
Meanwhile in Yale360, the CEO of one of America's big energy utilities, who believes rooftop solar will be competitive with fossil-fuel grid energy within five years.
And, back on Climate Progress, this blog calculates the retail price for solar power could fall to 8 cents/kWh in the next 4-5 years.
Posted by: sustainadelic
on 13 Nov, 2011
Fatih Birol, chief economist at the OECD's International Energy Agency (IEA) - hardly an alarmist greenie organisation - has issued a dire warning the world is heading for irreversible climate change within the next five years.
"I am very worried – if we don't change direction now on how we use energy, we will end up beyond what scientists tell us is the minimum [for safety]. The door will be closed forever," says Birol.
The warning comes as US Department of Energy figures show 2010 saw the biggest-ever annual rise in greenhouse gas emissions - an increase of 6 per cent, or 564 million tonnes.
Emissions from burning coal, the biggest single source of carbon dioxide emissions, rose 8 per cent.
Greenhouse gas levels are now higher than the supposedly "alarmist" worst-case predictions of the 2007 International Panel on Climate Change report.
